Elections staff says GOP Senate candidates have enough valid signatures to make ballot

State Bureau of Elections staff said Friday that all but one of the remaining candidates for an open U.S. Senate seat in Michigan have enough valid nominating petition signatures to appear on the Aug. 6 primary ballots, dismissing claims from Democratic groups aimed at disqualifying several Republican candidates.

The staff made its recommendation ahead of the Board of State Canvassers' meeting next Friday, where the board will make a decision. Last week, the state Democratic Party and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee sent a letter to the board asking that it order a further review of the petition signature sheets submitted by several GOP candidates, including the putative front-runner, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers of Brighton.

That letter − which was submitted well after the deadline for formally challenging the signatures − argued the groups had found "patterns... of potential forgery and other fraudulent signature gathering tactics." On Friday, the Detroit News reported the groups followed up with a second letter asking for a specific review of Rogers' signatures again citing the potential for fraud.

Bureau of Election staff, however, said that because all of the Senate candidates had their nominating petitions randomly sampled, with 750 signatures scrutinized and then the number of invalid or fraudulent signatures from that sample extrapolated to the entire number of signatures submitted by each campaign − under a formula adopted by the board − a "separate review of (petition) sheets showing clear indications of fraud was irrelevant."

"However, staff reviewed the letter and will include the relevant information in referrals for further investigation of petition sheets showing clear indications of fraud," the elections staff wrote in a footnote.

The staff, in its review of signature samples from all seven of the Democratic and Republican U.S. Senate candidates, did recommend one be taken off the Aug. 6 ballot: Dearborn businessman Nasser Beydoun, who is running for the Democratic nomination. The staff found, in a challenge brought by another Democratic candidate, Hill Harper, that none of his petition sheets were valid because they included a post office box as the candidate's campaign address and not a street address or rural route as required by law.

Meanwhile, all of the other candidates − U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Holly and Harper of Detroit on the Democratic side and Rogers, former U.S. Rep. Justin Amash of Cascade Township, Grosse Pointe businessman Sandy Pensler and west Michigan Dr. Sherry O'Donnell − were found to have met the threshold of submitting at least 15,000 valid signatures by the staff.

The Democratic groups that had argued for the investigation into the signatures submitted by Rogers, Amash, Pensler and former U.S. Rep. Peter Meijer of Grand Rapids Township − who had already dropped out of the race − did not immediately respond to the staff report. While the Board of State Canvassers could reject the recommendation, it seldom does so, though the groups could encourage it.

The groups could also possibly ask a court to consider their claims if the Board of State Canvassers rejects them.

Rogers, for his part, had already sharply criticized the Democratic effort to push for an investigation into his petition signatures, especially after there had been no formal challenge filed by the state's deadline. "To be clear, this letter lacks any merit and fails to meet the requirements of state law," his campaign spokesman, Chris Gustafson, said Friday. "Mike Rogers faces zero legal challenges to his petition signatures, and the Rogers campaign remains confident in the validity of our petition signatures and looks forward to victory in November."

The letter argued that many of the patterns it had uncovered in sample petition sheets − which the groups said included entire sheets submitted by candidates with signatures from different signers that appear to be in the same handwriting and sheets which purported to be signed by the same circulator but with different handwriting being used for her signature and mistakes in her address and ZIP code − mirrored patterns seen two years ago when five GOP gubernatorial candidates were disqualified from the primary ballot after submitting fraudulent signatures.

This week, Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett also ruled that former state Sen. Adam Hollier of Detroit failed to file enough valid voter signatures to support his challenge in the Democratic primary of current U.S. Rep. Shri Thanedar, D-Detroit, knocking him off the ballot.

Contact Todd Spangler: tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter@tsspangler.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Elections staff says GOP Senate candidates should qualify for ballot